Says Lay, "We felt the original [show] didn't really have an origin story. It just kicks in with Captain Power, and you don't know who he is." There's nothing to explain who this guy is, and why he's a hero.

And this is why this will blow.I don't need an origin story. If something happens later that I should know, flashback. Otherwise you're just wasting my time.

You meet people every day. Do you know all of their "origin stories"? No, you accept who they are and move on. If you spend enough time with them, you learn more about them and their past. That is the right way to write shows and novels.

Wow, I just had to forward this link to a bunch of former co-workers. You see, our company invented the "interactive" technology this show was based on, and we did the CGI, effects, and post-production. Took out patents for the technology and everything. I'm a bit disappointed that we didn't get a mention.

Ishkur:I'm surprised no one's tried to revive the "80s super futuristic intelligent vehicle" genre. Airwolf, Street Hawk, Automan, Knight Rider.... it was a great time to believe in artificial intelligence.

There was also this POS in the 90s. I can't believe they squeezed four seasons out of a Chrysler commercial.

It was a time of darkness and destruction. A time of dread. Thanks to the twisted designs of a single man, the machines meant to end war for all time instead became the executioners of civilization. Humanity's history tells us such times produces heroes and heroines dedicated to turning back the darkness.

OK, after watching that is seems very familiar. I'm just missing the blue and green flourescent things on the sides of the street that blew up most spectacularly. That was the one part of the show that i remember the best.

Can anyone help me remember a sci-fi show i remember from the 90s? i remember the opening credits of zooming along ruined streets with these green and blue flickering fluorescent lights on the sides of the streets (not signs, just columns on the side) that would blow up SPECTACULARLY if you shot them. Also something about different types of robots being fought by the protagonists, which i can't remember (you had to shoot them in the eyes cause the armour everywhere else couldn't be penetrated). There was also a superweapon flying robot of some kind.

I believe i was about 5 when the show aired, so please forgive my lack of detail.

I had one of these toys back in the 80s. I had been fooling around with some BASIC programming and found out that on my old-school amber monochrome monitor if I cleared the screen black and then amber as fast as my computer could go I could trip out the light sensor in the toy and make my own target for the gun. I spent hours upon hours alternating the speed, seeing if I could make smaller targets with ASCII characters but keep the refresh speed, etc etc. I think that more than anything started me down the path of game programming....that and typing in endless code from the back of Byte and Compute! magazines. My friends had Atari and C64s, and I had an IBM XT....I was insanely jealous and would try to port the games in those magazines to IBM. Sometimes it worked but mostly it didn't. However, when I showed them that I could make a Captain Power "game" with my computer, the tables turned briefly. :)

As to TFA - as anyone who has gone back to re-watch favorite cartoons from their childhood will tell you....if you remember something being cool from grade school, just leave it the fark alone, you're only setting yourself up for disappointment. *cough GI Joe cough* Hope I'm wrong about this one, but I'm kinda betting this might suck.

Oh man, I remember Mantis. It used to come on Fridays right before the X-Files. At the time I liked it, but I was a kid and I get the feeling if I went back and watched it, it would seem pretty cheesy.

ds615:Says Lay, "We felt the original [show] didn't really have an origin story. It just kicks in with Captain Power, and you don't know who he is." There's nothing to explain who this guy is, and why he's a hero.

And this is why this will blow.I don't need an origin story. If something happens later that I should know, flashback. Otherwise you're just wasting my time.

You meet people every day. Do you know all of their "origin stories"? No, you accept who they are and move on. If you spend enough time with them, you learn more about them and their past. That is the right way to write shows and novels.

No, I don't. But then I wouldn't want to watch a TV show about the people I meet every day.

FuryOfFirestorm:For a show designed to sell toys, Captain Power was well written, ahead of it's time and dealt with mature themes such as war, death and free will. The only reason it didn't last very long is because "super early time slot + expensive production costs + low toy sales = cancellation". JMS had half of the second season all planned out before it was canned, so hopefully we'll get to see the material from his unused scripts in the reboot.

Agreed. As much as I remember of it, having been like 8 at the time, the actual plots of the episodes were pretty good; certainly way better than Power Rangers or any of the crap that was on in the 90s. The series ended with their base being invaded, and one of the pilots, cornered and injured sacrificing herself to activate the self-destruct after everyone else had escaped. The action bits where you were supposed to use the toy were of course pretty simplistic, but looked a lot better than most video games we had at the time, even if they were short and never changed. I had two or three of the VHS tapes and I got to the point of doing perfect runs without even trying.

As I recall the toy/game was pretty simple, like most 80s electronic toys; it worked sort of like duck hunt or any other "light gun" game. The toy started with 5 "power points" and everytime you show a target on screen, you gained a point and any time the toy detected a hit you lost 1 (or maybe more). The problem was it topped out at like 25 points and then you'd have to reset it, which could happen several times per action sequence once you got good at it.

I think it would be a tricky show to modernize now though. Any interactive toy would have to be pretty advanced to please kids of today, and probably too expensive to sell much as a result. I actually think its the sort of thing that could work as episodic content on systems like WiiU or XBox 360, but it would probably cost too much per episode to produce and sell that way unless they jammed in advertising somehow.

Ishkur:I'm surprised no one's tried to revive the "80s super futuristic intelligent vehicle" genre. Airwolf, Street Hawk, Automan, Knight Rider.... it was a great time to believe in artificial intelligence.

I do remember the show. I remember watching a lot of it. I even remember having some of the merchandise. And I remember the over-arching narrative/plot. But I can't for the life of me recall a single episode.

It's like I remember it and don't remember any of it at the same time.

Ishkur:I'm surprised no one's tried to revive the "80s super futuristic intelligent vehicle" genre. Airwolf, Street Hawk, Automan, Knight Rider.... it was a great time to believe in artificial intelligence.

Shadow Blasko:Ishkur: I'm surprised no one's tried to revive the "80s super futuristic intelligent vehicle" genre. Airwolf, Street Hawk, Automan, Knight Rider.... it was a great time to believe in artificial intelligence.

Well... I heard someone tried.. but I refused to believe it.

Yeah, they made KITT a farking Mustang that could transform into an SUV or some shiat. One of my coworkers also told me it could transform into a different kind of Mustang, but I'm not sure if he was just messing with me or not.

Weaver95:I remember this series. it was cheesy and very 80's but....it had a pretty damn good story line for a kids show designed to sell interactive toys. as I recall there was some VERY dark stuff in there.

When I saw the link about "Captain Power" part of my brain went "Oh heck yes! YES!". I literally can't remember a thing about the show (if there was simply a picture of Captain Power on a webpage I couldn't give the name to save my life), but I recognize that outfit and I remember loving this show as a kid.

/Damn you Fark, now I need to go refresh myself on 80's nostalgia because I know I LOVED this show but I think the parts of my memory dedicated to Captain Power were accidentally overwritten by memory now dedicated to understanding the byzantine labyrinth that was the approval pathway for a Canadian government department which I once worked for but no longer exists, so I can very easily put a more useful memory into those pathways.